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Monday, April 9, 2007

Red-bellied woodpecker, male, photographed on Saturday in the snow and through a closed sliding glass door.He's showing off just a touch of his namesake belly color.

As a beginning bird watcher I often wondered about certain bird names. Why was the ring-necked duck so named? Where's the ring on the neck? And the red-bellied woodpecker? I never saw its red belly. These names are left over from the era of shotgun ornithology, when birds were shot, then examined in the hand for unique field marks.

It's hard to see the subtle ring around the neck of the ring-necked duck, unless one is lying in your hands and its head is dangling lifelessly downward, exposing the full length of the neck. Red-bellied woodpeckers in their normal pattern of living, keep their bellies firmly propped against tree trunks, making any red feathers very hard to see. Again, on a bird in the hand, those red belly feathers pop right out at you.

I'm glad we're not still shooting birds to identify them. It's loud, bloody, hard to do, and too hard on the birds.

About Bill

Bill of the Birds

Bill Thompson III is the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest by day. He's also a keen birder, the author of many books, a dad, a field trip leader, an ecotourism consultant, a guitar player, the host of the "This Birding Life" podcast, a regular speaker/performer on the birding festival circuit, a gentleman farmer, and a fungi to be around. His North American life list is somewhere between 673 and 675. His favorite bird is the red-headed woodpecker. His "spark bird" was a snowy owl. He has watched birds in 25 countries and 44 states. But his favorite place to watch birds is on the 80-acre farm he shares with his wife, artist/writer Julie Zickefoose. Some kind person once called Bill "The Pied Piper of Birding" and he has been trying to live up to that moniker ever since.